Lesson 2 | Subjunctives

[1] Understanding the Subjunctive

Verbal Mood
In Greek III, our focus was entirely on finite verbs in the indicative mood. Now, in Greek IV we will introduce finite verbs in the subjunctive, imperative, and optative moods.
Verbal mood refers to how the speaker portrays the verb’s relationship to reality.


Indicative - The speaker portrays the verb’s action as a reality (He is doing this).
Subjunctive - The speaker portrays the verb’s action as a possibility (He might do this).
Optative - The speaker portrays the verb’s action as wished for (He wishes to do this).
Imperative - The speaker portrays the verb’s action as a command (Do this!).

The Subjunctive Mood
The description of the subjunctive mood above is accurate but needs to be filled out a bit. To say “possibility” does not imply “only a possibility.” That is, the action may very well be assured to happen. So we could call the subjunctive the mood of probability. The point is that, from the speaker’s point of view, the action is a step removed from reality. The context, including other grammatical markers, will indicate what degree of possibility or probability the speaker intends to convey.  A few examples may be the best way to see the various nuances of the subjunctive mood:
τεκνία μου, ταῦτα γράφω ὑμῖν, ἵνα μὴ ἁμάρτητε. καὶ ἐάν τις ἁμάρτῃ, Παράκλητον ἔχομεν πρὸς τὸν Πατέρα, Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν δίκαιον,

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

—1 John 2:1
ταῦτά σοι πάντα δώσω, ἐὰν πεσὼν προσκυνήσῃς μοι,

“All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”

—Matthew 4:9
πᾶς ὃς ἂν ἐπικαλέσηται τὸ ὄνομα Κυρίου σωθήσεται,

Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

—Acts 2:21
ποιήσωμεν τὰ κακά, ἵνα ἔλθῃ τὰ ἀγαθά

Let us do evil, that good may come (...as some people slanderously charge us with saying.)
 
—Romans 3:8
ζητεῖται ἐν τοῖς οἰκονόμοις, ἵνα πιστός τις εὑρεθῇ

it is required of stewards that one be found faithful.

—1 Corinthians 4:2
καὶ πᾶσα γλῶσσα ἐξομολογήσηται ὅτι Κύριος Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς,

and [so that] every tongue [should] confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

—Philippians 2:11
You can see among these passages the full range of “might,” “may,” “shall,” and “should.” Each of these words can, in fact, express the subjunctive mood and, as we will discover, there are several other specific uses beyond these.
Tense Communicates Aspect Only
While indicative verbs express both time and aspect according to their various tense forms, verbs outside of the indicative mood do not communicate time—only aspect. This results in two important details for all verbs outside the indicative mood:
They will never have an augment. The augment on indicative verbs marks past time. Since subjunctive, optative, and imperative verbs do not communicate time, they will not have an augment.
Only three tenses are used to communicate the three aspects:
present tense = imperfective aspect
aorist tense = perfective aspect
[[ perfect tense = stative aspect ]]
But the perfect tense is placed in brackets since it is only rarely used outside the indicative mood. Perfect subjunctives occur only 10 times in the Greek NT; perfect imperatives occur only 4 times. For this reason, we will not learn these forms.

Cheat Sheet: Subjunctives, Imperatives, and Conditional ClassespdfA printable cheat sheet containing all the paradigms you need to memorize for this course.

Cheat Sheet with BlankspdfIn this document, the Greek text has been removed from the above cheat sheet so you can fill it in for memory practice.